My problem isn’t that the Big Ten cancelled fall football, but how it reached the decision
By Pat Harty
IOWA CITY, Iowa – Defending the Big Ten Conference’s controversial decision to cancel the fall football season would almost certainly be met with strong resistance and resentment by some.
And fair enough because the sport that so many cherish, and that so many rely on for financial and emotional support, has been taken away for reasons that lack clarity, and the Big Ten players and their parents want answers.
Actually, what the parents want more than anything is for their sons to play football this fall under the safest conditions as possible during a global pandemic.
If it’s safe enough for three of the five Power 5 conferences to play football this fall, then why isn’t it safe enough for the Big Ten?
Iowa Athletic Director Gary Barta shed some light on that subject during a Zoom conference with the media on Monday, and he said the decision to cancel the fall season was based on multiple health factors, but without being real specific.
Barta also had little to say about how each of the conference’s presidents and chancellors voted because he said he doesn’t have that information and was not present for the vote.
Barta did say that he and University of Iowa President Bruce Harreld both were in favor of delaying the vote in hopes that the circumstances might improve to where a fall season would have been possible. Barta also said that he and Harreld were aligned on playing the fall schedule the league had put out.
But that was about it with regard to anything specific.
“I’m not going into details exactly how that flowed in the communication,” Barta said of the voting process. “I wanted to wait longer, the vote came out in majority of the presidents saying we’re to cut it off now and now I’m spending all of my energy trying to get back as fast as we can.”
Therein lies the problem, too much secrecy and not enough transparency.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the Big Ten ultimately turns out to be right by cancelling the fall football season because there is no guarantee that the three conferences will play this fall, not with the virus starting to spread on college campuses, including the Iowa campus where in-person classes started on Monday.
I’m only defending the final decision because it was made with the safety and well-being of the student-athletes as the top priority, as it should have been.
That has to be the biggest concern under any circumstance, even it causes a financial crisis as is occurring now with colleges across the country.
Iowa announced this past Friday that four sports would be eliminated after the 2020-21 season, and Barta said Monday that the decision to cut men’s and women’s swimming, men’s tennis and men’s gymnastics was based solely on the financial shortcomings caused by the COVID-19 global pandemic.
I also feel that Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren has been unfairly singled out for criticism because he is the easiest target based on what we know.
But in fairness to Warren, he didn’t make the decision to cancel fall football. He did what a majority of the conference’s presidents and chancellors told him to do after they were advised on what to do by medical and legal experts.
Warren is certainly not without blame, though, because somebody has to be blamed for the Big Ten’s lack of planning, transparency and awareness.
The parents and the players should have been more involved, or at least, more informed about what was happening behind closed doors and on all those zoom calls.
The parents deserved to be more recognized because their sons were impacted by what was decided in private more than anybody else.
Warren is in the awkward position of having a son who still plans to play football for Mississippi State this fall.
Warren said in a recent interview that his family had some deep discussions about his son playing this fall, and rightfully so.
But what about the parents of the Big Ten players?
They never had the opportunity to have those discussions because the Big Ten acted almost exclusively on its own, and mostly in private.
The Big Ten owes the parents and players a better explanation for why in just six days it went from revising the fall football schedules to cancelling the fall season.
What happened from a medical standpoint to cause such a dramatic and sudden change?
The parents, players and coaches all deserve to know.
And the media deserves to know.
Kevin Warren still has some explaining to do, but it’s probably too late at this point.
Warren has lost the trust and respect of many of the Big Ten parents and fans, and that’s a shame because I still think Warren has what it takes to be an effective commissioner.
It’s just impossible to know how much of what he is or isn’t doing is being dictated by other people.
Warren’s popularity would sink even further if the three conferences that still plan to play football this fall actually succeed in doing so.
That would take this public relations disaster to a whole new level, along with the distrust and resentment.
The biggest challenge for the Big 12 Conference, the Southeastern Conference and the Atlantic Coast Conference won’t be starting the fall football season, but rather sustaining it.
It’s easy and convenient to use professional sports as an example of why it’s safe to play this fall since the NBA and Major League Baseball are making it work so far. There have been a few setbacks, but not enough to cause a major disruption in either sport.
The problem with that comparison, however, is that college student-athletes are different than professional athletes in so many ways, the biggest difference being that it’s not a full-time job for college athletes that pays handsomely, as it is for professional athletes.
College student-athletes still have to take a full load of classes, whether in person or online.
They also want to socialize and take advantage of being away from home for the first time.
The photos of college students waiting in line to get into bars on the UI campus, and with most not wearing masks, is disturbing, but hardly a surprise.
It almost seems as if the college students are being set up to fail so they can be blamed for not having fall football.
And if that is the case, shame on the adults.
We’re left to speculate and to fill in the blanks on our own because of the Big Ten’s lack of transparency and planning.
And for many of the parents and student-athletes, that is unacceptable. And that’s a problem.